


Fallen

by Seralyn



Category: Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:01:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27537235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seralyn/pseuds/Seralyn
Summary: In 1781, Jamie Fraser's estranged son arrives at his doorstep asking for assistance in saving a wife no one knew existed. His Virginia estate has fallen to the advancing Patriots and violence has erupted.In 1981, Kit Breckon returns home to Inverness, haunted by the disappearance of her younger brother some fourteen years earlier. Convinced that he fell victim to the stones and armed with stories of other travelers, Kit arrives at Craigh na Dun, determined to bring home her wayward brother.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 27





	1. Chapter 1

~1781~  
“William,” the sight of her stepson startled her. He was fidgeting upon her stairs, looking ever bit as agitated as the last time he’d come in the middle of the night. Hurt and frightened Fraser eyes found her, previewing turmoil. She straightened herself, clenching her teeth, and asked a question she already knew the answer to, “are you alright?”  
To her eye, he appeared every bit healthy. Exhaustion was evident in the purplish-black bags underneath his eyes, but there were no visible injuries. She would allow herself some solace in knowing that physically he was alright. He had been a worry gnawing in her heart since the last time she’d seen him.  
“No...is Mr. Fraser home? I need his help,”  
Claire yanked the door the rest of the way open allowing him into her home. He stalked behind her, following her past the foyer into the parlor. She gestured to the seat but he stubbornly stood, staring out at the window. Was he searching for persons pursuing him? His clothing was wrinkled and wreaked of mud and soil and body odor. It’d been some time since he’d been home. The candlelight was catching his beard. It had an eerily familiar reddish copper tint to it.  
William watched as Mother Claire vanished up the stairs, exhaling a breath he did not realize he’d been holding. Had he truly approached them with trepidation? A part of him, shamefully, realized feared they would say no. He’d be left to find her all by himself. His thoughts swirled around heinous acts. He willed away the images that had been haunting his dreams.  
“Willie,” Jamie said entering the room. He was tugging on a coat, “are ye alright?”  
“I need your help,” William said trying to burry all sorts of wretched mixed feelings stirring within him. Slanted eyes precisely the same as his own were starring at him, imploring to explain further, “we need to go to Virginia to my estate. Bloody rebels are storming houses of sworn loyalists and they’re holding estates hostage. We must spare no haste,”  
“Is Lord John in danger? ” Claire questioned edging her way into the parlor.  
“No least not from those rebels, mayhaps from others,” William said, “he’s with the Duke of Pardloe looking for the Duke’s son. Please, we have to leave tonight,”  
He loathed the way his voice was breaking. It was betraying how desperate and helpless he felt. He was a soldier damnit. An Earl. He was not to be quaking in the fear of some rebels. His feet began now to pace the perimeter of the parlor, hugging closely to the wall. He was holding his fists, rubbing his knuckles to prevent them from meeting the wooden walls. He doubted they would be of a mind to assist him if he damaged their home.  
“If there are masses in yer estate lad we’ll be needing more than ye and I to recapture it,” The Scot was standing by his wife now. He had been a known traitor and no doubt he held little sympathy for any loyalist, son, or not.  
“Damn the estate. Let it fucking burn,” William growled out. The harsh words garnering startled expressions from all of the Frasers, “there’s somebody there I have to save…,” and all of his words were caught in his throat, “my wife. I- I have to save my wife,”  
~1980~  
The cabbie who had picked her up from the airport was a particularly chatty fellow. An Edinburgh native, she could tell by his accent, he had not stopped asking her questions since she scooted into the back. Was it her first time in Scotland? How about in Edinburgh? Was she going to see Palace of Holyroodhouse and Holyrood Abbey? Or climb to Arthur’s seat? No matter how curt her answers to his querries were, he did not stop. The cheeriness in his voice not abating. It was grating to hear after her grueling trans-Atlantic flight.  
“I was born in Inverness,” she relented finally. Her backpack jittered as they hit a pothole. She clutched onto it tightly. All of her worldly possessions, the sparingly few, were held within its worn leather. His beady eyes found hers in the rearview mirror.  
“Aye were ye really? Ye have no accent,”  
“I have an American accent. I’m told when I’m in my cups or tired, the Scot comes out...I left before I turned eight,”  
“What’s yer name lass? I have an Auntie from ‘round those parts,”  
“Caitir Breckon, my father was Welsh. My mother was born Kathleen MacLeod... pull over here,” she directed him towards the first Inn she spotted. He did as she asked and she paid him, “mar sin leat,” The Gaelic farewell made the cabbie burst into laughter. She could hear him chuckling as he drove away. She watched his rickety car turn sharply around a corner disappearing. The Inn had once been someone’s home, converted into a bed and breakfast. It was charmingly Scottish. Narrow and dark, she followed behind the innkeeper into a room with a lonely single bed. It squeaked when she plopped down beside it. Its mattress was hard and as she tried to move around to soften it, the contents of her bag tipped, sending them scattered across the carpeted floor. Her fingers finding first the framed photograph. Inside of it was the last family photograph the Breckons had ever taken as a complete unit. She was five-years-old in it, held in her father’s arms, glaring and squinting at the camera. It was the sixth or seventh attempt at a photograph and she’d grown loathsome of being so still and smiling. Her mother Kathleen was radiant, holding her golden child, her son Cillian in her arms. The three-year-old grinning at whoever was behind the camera.  
They looked so deliriously happy. So content at this picnic in St. James’ park of London. Painfully unaware of the tragedy that would befall them in two months’ time. The tragedy that sent them, she and her mother and Cillian back to Inverness. To their grandparents’ small cottage on the outskirts of Inverness. To an eccentric grandda, who could not walk well since the first Great War, but liked to tell stories of a rock circle with singing stones. As children, she and Cillian sat beside his armchair, listening to strange tales of the highlands. Her granny and mum dismissed them as nonsense, but Caitir had been charmed by the idea of the singing stones.  
That morning had been bitterly cold. She could remember yanking up her wool stockings and forcing shivering fingers into knitted gloves. They had left a note on the mantle stating that they were going to the singing stones. Hand and hand they alternatively skipped, jumped, and ran towards the foreboding circular stones. Their beauty was enchanting and ethereal. The fog had settled into the valley and hugged the underneath of the stones. They appeared to be sprouting from nowhere.  
“I hear them,” Cillian had whispered. It was the last thing she had ever heard him say. She had wandered away from him to pick flowers for Gran and when she whirled around, she watched as he disappeared into the standing stone.  
Her fingers brushed against the baby’s face in the photograph, “I’m coming for you little brother,”


	2. Chapter 2

Her memory of the immediate events succeeding her brother’s disappearance was acute. She spent each day and night reliving them. She remembered the flowers slipping past her fingers and walking towards the stones as if they were calling to her. A guiding light, a compass to Cillian. She remembered not feeling sad or scared. She remembered pale tiny fingers reaching for the headstone when she heard her Mum calling for them and then things blurred.

There were suddenly lights of many colors and constables asking her relentless questions. Had she seen anyone lurking around the stones? Heard a scream? They kept asking her to repeat herself over and over again. From their faces and their tones of voice, they did not believe her. Who would believe a presumably traumatized seven-year-old who was claiming her brother touched stones and disappeared into them? A seven-year-old who was insistent that the stones sang! They brought cadaver dogs. They sniffed at Cillian’s gloves and sat beside the center stone. They remained in Scotland for another year, searching in vain. She could not remember if she’d gone to school or what she did each day. She was hollow with grief and guilt. Cillian was gone and Mum blamed Grandda for telling stories about singing stones. 

There was but one clue. Cait was not supposed to hear them. She had been sent to bed to not hear the grim talk of the police, but she sat atop the narrow stairs. Constable Wyatt asked if they had ever heard of Claire Randall. She was an English woman who came on holiday to Scotland. She vanished from the same standing circles in 1945. Similarly, with Cillian, there were no leads or evidence of any sort of crime. No blood and nobody. She returned unharmed some three years later. The case still remained unsolved. 

At seven Cait had no idea what to do with the information but she remembered the name. Claire Randall. Claire Randall. Claire Randall. Claire Randall. That name became her own beacon of hope. She might know what had happened to Cillian.

They moved shortly before she turned eight to Wilmington, North Carolina. A place so distinctively unlike Inverness or London. A beach coastal town that clung to warm humid weather like fog and rain clung to their old home. She was teased for her Scottish name and her accent, but she learned to become more and more American. Americanness and pride seeped into her. Despite her transformation into an American teenager, she never forgot the stones or Claire Randall and began her erstwhile search for the woman. 

~1781~

“Yer wife?” Jamie repeated, thick red brows meeting together. There had been no word from Lord John regarding any nuptials. He would like to think despite whatever their relationship stood there would have been some sort of message regarding William, especially now that William himself was aware of the truth. 

As if reading his thoughts, William answered his unvoiced questions, “Neither Papa nor Uncle Hal know... the courtship was well nonexistent and we married under unusual circumstances,” he cleared his throat, “I fear she is in imminent danger. Please sir I would not be here if such a situation did not warrant it,”

“Of course lad. I’ll help ye,”

The rescue mission was to be a family event. Accompanied by Jamie, Fergus, and Ian, they rode in silence. They had given him another mare. A black stead as his horse had been dead tired from his original trip. The horse was unfamiliar to him, but he could see that she had been well-groomed and well trained and young. She neighed and bucked her head in protest when they halted by a stream to gather water. Without really thinking about the matter at all, he leaned forward running a gentle hand through her mane and repeated the only Gaelic he knew. He did not know the meaning of the words, but she did and instantly quieted down. He clicked his tongue and whispered praise before sitting upright to meet questioning faces. The warmth was spreading to his cheeks. William had not realized they could hear him. His eyes found Jamie, whose expression was a mixture of pride, confusion, and shock. He felt suddenly breathless and slid from his saddle. He kept his backside to them as he bent to fill his gauntlet with water. When he turned around once more their faces had recovered no doubt wanting to incur his wrath. 

The Gaelic words echoed in his head bringing forth memories he’d long forgotten. Mac always spoke to the horses in Gaelic. The words came from the back of his throat and were harsh to even his own ears. For a time after Mac left, he solemnly tended to the horses, muttering to them those same phrases. It had a calming effect even on the most willy of them. 

“I suppose congratulations are in order, cousin,” Ian said, a broad smile across his fair face, “ye get married! What ‘tis the lassie’s name?” 

Three pairs of eyes were intently staring at him. He’d been mum about the details. Not necessarily purposefully but the more he thought of her the more he worried, but for their efforts, they deserved at least some information about whose life they were risking themselves for. To him, she had two names. The one he came to know first and the one that she revealed only on their wedding night. 

“Caitir,” he said placing a hand on the mare’s head, “her name is Caitir,” 

Ian made a noise, a Scottish noise, that sounded delighted. His eyes flicking back and forth to Jamie. 

“Is she a Scot?”

William licked his lips, once again warmth and redness were spreading across his cheeks. For once, he was glad he did not have a clean-shaven face. His stubbornly reddish beard was covering the redness beneath it. For a moment he feared he resembled a tomato, “She is half-Scottish and half-Welsh,” he admitted, “but she grew up here in America,” 

She was fiercely American. He had only encountered a handful of colonists who shared her fervent support of the colonies. The colonists will win, she told him the night they hid in the bar, they are fighting for a cause far greater than any loyalty to a crown. The thought of that night in the barn washed away his embarrassment. He was filled then with amusement. The pair of them were hiding from his former regiment, damp from their river crossing and full of animosity for each other. He had wanted to bring her forth to his commander and senior officials, but there was something in her pale grey eyes that made him hesitate. 

~1980~

 **S** he had once been to Lallybroch. Grandda had taken her when she first returned to Scotland. It was abandoned then but she could still see the echoes of the beauty underneath the overgrowth. They were etched into the skeleton of the house. He prattled on and on about clans and times of old in the Highlands. The sight of it, restored to its former glory, made her smile. Grandda would be cheering from the great beyond. 

A boy of about eight-years-old answered the door. He had vibrant red hair and chocolate smeared around his mouth. “Can I help ye?” 

“I’m looking for a Mrs. Claire Randall. Is she here?” 

“Jemmy whose at the door?” A voice asked from somewhere behind him. The boy, Jemmy, did not answer. A woman who could only be his mother appeared then. Matching red hair and matching suspicious looks. 

“She’s looking for Grannie,” 

“Go find your sister Jemmy,” With her son gone, she turned back to Cait. Hand resting on the ancient door, “why are you looking for Claire Randall?” 

“It’s hard to explain. Is your mother here?” 

Slanted cat eyes glared dangerously at her. Claire Randall’s daughter was scarily tall. About six foot or so. Cait on the other had not grown since sixth grade and could still pass for a high school freshmen. She felt her heart plummeting. Had Claire passed? The only link to Cillian she had. 

“Please Mrs. MacKenzie. I’ve come from far. I just need to ask her a couple of questions,”

“My mother is dead,” the voice was absolute. Tearing into her heart as if they were thousands of tiny little knives, “has been for some while,” Her voice had lost its edge, “will you tell me what you wanted to ask her? I might be able to help,” 

Maybe it was the fresh tears that had blurred her vision that had softened Claire Randall’s daughter. The door to Lallybroch was now opening and through her tears, she could see a sort of half-smile greeting her. Her feet were dragging her into the estate. Her mind numbingly blank. An automatic part of herself must have been answering questions as tea the way she liked it was brought to her. 

“I-I-I…,” and the whole truth came out, “your mum and my brother disappeared from the same standing stones. About twenty years apart. I thought...I thought. My brother he’s never come home,” 

Brianna MacKenzie felt as if she were sinking. There was such sadness in the strange woman before her.The woman's brother had traveled through time. Of that she was certain. He had fallen through the stones on Beltane in 1967. Her mother would travel some months later to seventeen sixty-six. The brother was a cute toddler and now she was picturing a child only a little older than Amanda lost in the 1760s. Scared and frightened and alone, in a place some distance from any sort of civilization. Did he wonder about the countryside calling in vain for a family that would not exist for some two hundred years? She reached across the table and squeezed the girl’s hand, trying to convey all that she could. 

It took some time, but Caitir composed herself and Brianna drove her to the Inn she had been staying in. She left behind her phone number and told Caitir that she was welcome to join them for supper. The invitation was understandably denied. Brianna resolved to call her in some hours. She told the squat innkeeper to keep an eye on her. She returned to her children. To homework and to baths and to dinner. All throughout the events, Cillian stayed on her mind. Could he have survived? Or did he perish? Both Jemmy and Amanda had survived traveling through the stones. He would have survived the journey at least. 

Roger listened to her story, intently. His eyes never left her face as he changed out of his work attire. He too must have been thinking if it had been their child. Their children had grown up with parents knowing about the stones and their abilities. Knew to caution them away from the stones on certain days. 

“Ye didn’t tell her?” 

“How could I explain it all? Time-travel? She would think me a loon,” Brianna whispered, “and I could not break her heart any further thinking her brother had been lost in 1765,” 

“Och. Aye. But what if he survived?” 

“He was a little boy all alone,” 

"Perhaps not. Maybe some family took him in. Or thought he was a changeling,” 

Brianna bit on her lip. There was a possibility but she had to be sure before she told Caitir anything at all. 


	3. Chapter 3

~1781~  
Mount Josiah  
The immense estate was feeling more and more like a prison. Both boarded and isolated by the James River, its flooding banks only adding cement to the invisible walls that kept them inside. None of Mount Josiah’s current occupants, from its servants to its Countess, dared venture much further than the courtyard. When night fell they were haunted by fires and by the hooting and hollering of rebels. They were never seen. Not by Manoke, an Indian scout from Quebec, or Caitir Ransom, Lady Ellesmere. Both could be found at night staring into the wilderness, eyes squinted in the darkness searching for impending silhouettes of men atop horseback. They made queer companions but all inside of Mount Josiah was thankful for their leadership.   
“Do you pray for the husband to come American woman?” Manoke questioned. His streaked hair caught underneath the candlelight, showing the spread of grey in his dark. In the days since they became aware of the impending threat, Caitir could swear the amount doubled.  
She was accustomed to his frank manner of speech and had an appreciation for it. It was refreshing to be referred to anything but Lady Ellesmere or your grace. With one last clutch of her crucifix, she tucked it into the pocket of her breeches. Blinking back tears, she answered him, “no. I do not pray for William to come home,” The admittance garnered a perplexed expression, “if he returns he’ll be walking into an ambush. I pray he stays far away from this fray,”  
“You are unwise,”   
Though he did not voice it, Caitir could read the thoughts in his coal eyes. He’d known William for a long time. He was loyal to a fault, stubborn to an indeterminable degree, and prone to rash actions. Odds are he had heard of the attacks on other loyalists’ estates and was maniacally riding to reach Mount Josiah. Please Lord, keep him far away, keep him safe. She began to spin the ring on her finger. It gleamed underneath the light, a brilliant emerald with a silver band. Inside were four carved initials, those of William’s parents and their own. It’d been bestowed upon her sometime after their wedding. He had blushed and smiled shyly when presenting it, nervously scratching behind his ear. Movements that were so unfamiliar to him. It slid onto her finger as if she were born to wear it. Caitir would later find out that he had, utilizing one of her ribbons, measured her finger in her sleep. He brought her to a painted portrait of his parents on their wedding day. His mother was beautiful even etched into oil and canvas. William possessed her coloring and her chin and nothing else from either of his parents. The more she stared at the pointing, the more and more she wondered about it. Could it be that he resembled some other family member? A grandparent? Or had something else conspired? The way he reacted to her gentle questions made her assume the latter.   
“Sun is rising,” Manoke announced, and indeed it was. They had survived another night. She bid her farewell to Manoke, to do her usual rounds of the estate. Checking each room for the supply of gunpowder and guns and then to the storage to assess their supply of food. It had been getting devastatingly low, but she would not yet risk sending anyone out for provisions.   
What were they waiting for? They were sitting ducks at Mount Josiah. An estate of women and untrained servants and slaves. They could none the wiser that the Countess of Ellesmere was attempting to teach them all how to fire a gun without actually firing a gun or wasting precious powder. She’d be damned if they went down without fighting to the last. Let them be shot at and bleed. Let them hurt and be hesitant for daring to attack innocents.   
Will, my love, be safe and be far.   
***  
“I was looking for her brother. It’s why I left her at Mount Josiah,” William was saying in explanation. He was frustratingly throwing pieces of dry grass into their meager whimpering fire. Jamie was surprised that he was being addressed at all. Willie had been avoiding both his glance and any of his questions, Ian, Roger, and Fergus took turns intermediating, “she’s uh...she has incurred the wrath and a bounty upon her head,”  
Slanted cat-eyes gazed up then, peeking out from underneath fringes of too long chestnut curls. They were searching for his reaction, pleased or otherwise. Jamie wondered if he realized he was doing it all, the expression appearing and disappearing so quickly. It was reminiscent of the teary stares he’d get from little Willie after he calmed himself from his turbulent outbursts. The boy always found his way to the stables. His eyes swollen with grief and snot dripping from the tip of his nose. The sight would send his heart into a thumpering mess. He had to fight every urge not to step over the boundaries of what was appropriate as a groom. The horses proved as great boundary keepers and he could listen to the boy’s woes from a safe distance.  
“Aye?” he replied neutrally, “fer what?”   
Roger Mac had ridden up to him shortly after they had been told the name of William’s wife. She was Caitir Breckon when she came to Lallybroch in the year of our Lord nineteen eighty. Looking for Claire. His son had married a traveler. The irony of it was not lost upon Jamie. He, while processing, had laughed quite a number of times to himself.  
“For knowing too much,” William uttered, his long fingers twiddling with a long thin yellowed weed, “she has an unnatural knowledge of battles and movements of regiments,”  
Unnatural, bollocks. Jamie would not tell his son the reason for his wife’s knowledge. It was both her secret and her tale. The circumstances of their wedding sounded rushed, though there was love at least on William’s part. He prayed that it was reciprocated. He could not think of a worse fate for a marriage than for it to be only one-sided. He was poking at the fire now with a stick. Thousands of emotions rushed through his face though he was doing his best to hide it.   
“Do you...do you..,” his voice growing fainter as his confidence waned.  
“Ye can ask me anything within reason,” Jamie reassured, reminded of their last conversation. Being who I am, I think I deserve to know!  
It must have been the nerves that were loosening his tongue. The nerves and incessant worry about his wife that he was daring to breach conversation with James Fraser. Especially since he was about to bring to discussion Mac’s last night at Helwater. Did Papa ever tell you that I cried for you? He’d begged and pleaded with both Lord John and Mother Isobel to journey to Scotland and demand Mac’s return. They shared private glances and spoke to him gently. He cared little for their kind soft words. Did a part of him know then that his father had left? He’d been crying for his father. You left me. You went away.  
He licked his lips, cursing himself but progressed on, “the night before you left,”  
“Aye,”   
Damn you, William thought savagely, damn you and your ability to hide every emotion.Was that night not one you reflected upon with grief? His fervent movements made him stumble, his stick slipping from his clammy hands and was swallowed by the flames.  
“You were right...about a wife finding me,”  
****  
Mount Josiah  
“Again,” Caitir told her maid watching her clumsy stabbing movements. She was moving with no real conviction and her strikes would barely cause any damage at all, “you’re fighting for your life,”  
Anna stared at her dubiously but complied. She turned sideways and bit her lip attempting to please her mistress. For the first time in her life, Caitir was thankful for her paranoid ex-military stepfather Peter. The man was a militant conspiracy theorist who saw enemies in every shadow and every corner. A veteran of the Second World War and Korea, he never transitioned fully back into civilian life. He awoke before sunrise and kept up his exercise regiment until his knee gave out. Her mother saw in him safety. She was a broken shell after father’s death and Cillian’s disappearance. She too saw danger lurking.   
Their combined paranoia led to a very sheltered life in Wilmington. For a long while their weekends were spent in different cabins in the Appalchian mountains. Peter taught both her and her mother how to hunt and shoot and to fight. She had loathed those weekends. Torn away from her friends and from any sort of civilization, she became combatant, damaging her relationship with her mother.  
“Maybe they willna come at all,” Anna said.   
“I will pray for that outcome,”


End file.
